The invention relates to a medical instrument for manipulating, in particular retracting tissue or an organ in the human or animal body.
The invention further relates to a method for manipulating, in particular retracting tissue or an organ in the human or animal body which uses a medical Instrument of the aforementioned type.
In surgical operations on patients, it is often necessary to manipulate tissue or organs during the accomplishment of surgical tasks. Such manipulations can consist in putting aside an organ or tissue in order to obtain an access to deeper lying tissue or organs on which the surgical task is to be accomplished, or in retracting tissue or an organ for a subsequent dissection of tissue, for example. In this sense, manipulating can involve any kind of moving, turning, displacing and in particular retracting tissue or organs.
In the prior art, numerous instruments exist for the purpose of manipulating tissue. Regardless of whether the surgical task is being performed using open techniques or a minimal-invasive access approach, the vast majority of such instruments employ two jaws arranged at a distal end of the shaft of the instrument, and the jaws are operated by the motion of handles arranged at the proximal end of the shaft which handles usually are configured in a scissors-grip arrangement. The jaws at the distal end of the shaft of the instrument have grasping faces opposite to each other which are inclined at an acute angle to each other when grasping tissue. Such a prior art medical instrument for manipulating tissue or organs is known from document WO 00/09021, for example.
The use of such known medical grasping instruments for manipulating tissue or organs in the human or animal body exhibits several drawbacks.
The surfaces of the jaws of the instrument usually employ raised sharpened features, e.g. teeth, in order to obtain traction on slippery tissue surfaces. Such features inevitably cause trauma to the tissue surfaces which they grasp.
The jaws exert pressure on the tissues which they are grasping. Such pressure may cause direct trauma to the surfaces and internal structures of the tissue. Also, since such pressures may occlude the vascular supply, the tissues may become traumatised through ischaemia.
Further, the pressure exerted on tissues is not evenly distributed, but tends to be much greater close to the apex of the angle formed by the jaws.
Furthermore, the presence of the grasping instruments in the surgical field may impede access to the tissues required to accomplish the surgical intent.